1.1 Hacks #1-8

eBay
is a community of buyers and sellers, not just a mere web site or
piece of software. It's a complex social system of
which you are an active member. Success on eBay depends not only on
your ability to master the technical tasks of bidding and selling,
but on your ability to communicate with other eBay members and your
willingness to contribute to the community in a positive way.

Feedback is the basis of trust on eBay. Each eBay member has his or
her own feedback profile, a public collection of comments left by
other eBay members. Each individual feedback comment is tied to a
transaction in which the particular member took part.
Feedback
comments are marked either positive, negative, or neutral, and are
added accordingly in the summary that appears at the top of the page.

A member's feedback
rating
is the number representing the sum of all positive comments, minus
the sum of all negative comments. (Note, however, that multiple
comments left by a single user will never count more than one point.)
This number, shown in parentheses after a member's
user ID, is a useful tool in determining the trustworthiness and
experience level of any given eBay member.

It's important to note that the feedback rating
alone does not give you a sufficient picture of any
member's personal history. Before you do business
with any other member, make sure to click on the feedback rating to
view the member's feedback profile as a whole.

Feedback is taken very seriously on eBay, and with good reason. For
example, a seller who deals honestly and fairly with his or her
customers will earn lots of positive feedback over the years.
Conversely, dishonest or unreliable sellers and deadbeat bidders are
likely to earn a higher percentage of negative feedback.

1.1.1 Leaving Feedback

You can leave
feedback
for another member only if you are both involved in a transaction,
namely a completed auction. The actual task of leaving feedback is
quite simple; simply go to the completed auction page and click Leave
Feedback. Choose a rating (positive, neutral, or negative) and type a
"review" in the space provided.
You'll then have 80 characters in which to explain
what the other eBay member did right (or wrong).

Here are some guidelines for writing appropriate feedback:

Positive. As long as a transaction goes reasonably well, you should always
leave positive feedback for the other party.

If you're a bidder, you'll want to
reward the seller for shipping quickly, responding to questions
promptly, and describing the item accurately; for example:

Negative. Negative feedback is unfortunately overused on eBay, and is, in most
cases, unnecessary.

If at all possible, try to resolve the problem with the other party
instead of leaving negative feedback. If you're a
buyer, for example, and you're not happy with the
transaction, contact the seller to see if he or she will make it
right before you give up and post negative feedback. Not only will
you avoid possible feedback retaliation, but you might stand to get
some money out of it as well.

As a bidder, you should leave negative feedback only if you paid and
never received the item, if the seller misrepresented the item and
did not offer a refund, or if the seller defrauded you in some way.
(Note that unless the seller is also the
manufacturer of the item, it's
not fair to leave negative feedback simply because you
don't like the item you purchased. And remember, you
can always resell the item if you're not happy.)

"Seller sent damaged item; completely uncooperative
about refund."

"Warning: seller took money and never shipped. Had
to dispute charge."

If you're a seller, you should leave negative
feedback only for deadbeat bidders who don't pay.
(It's not acceptable to penalize a bidder for
returning an item as a result of your mistake.) For example:

"Bid high and then disappeared! No response to
numerous emails."

"Beware! Bidder paid with a bad
check!"

Neutral. While neutral comments don't affect the feedback
rating, they carry the stigma of a complaint. For this reason, leave
neutral feedback only when you have a legitimate complaint but
can't bring yourself to leave negative feedback. For
example, neutral feedback might be appropriate for a bidder who
repeatedly does not follow payment instructions, or a seller who
packs an item so poorly that it arrives damaged. A few examples:

"Poor packing job, shipping took a long time. Seller
slow to respond."

"Condition wasn't great; seller too
busy to care. Not recommended."

"Bidder took a month to send payment; not responsive
to emails."

Overall, remember the purpose of the
feedback system when writing feedback for
another member. The point of negative and neutral comments is to
serve as warnings to other eBay members and to help show a pattern of
misconduct. Unless the other person caused you a real problem or cost
you money unnecessarily, your feedback comment should be positive and
should reward the person for what they did right.
Don't use negative or neutral feedback frivolously;
for example, don't dock a seller for putting a
mailing label on crooked.

Finally, never use feedback as a means of coercion, and
don't let other eBay members blackmail you by
threatening to leave negative feedback. Any buyer or seller who lets
another member get away with murder ? simply because they
don't want that person to retaliate with negative
feedback ? does the entire eBay community a disservice.

1.1.2 Deciphering Feedback

As you use eBay, you'll constantly be reviewing
other members'
feedback profiles, so
it's important to interpret the numbers properly.
What it usually comes down to is determining a pattern of behavior
from the bits and pieces of past transactions.

At the top of a feedback profile page, eBay shows a summary and
distribution of past feedback comments, as shown in Figure 1-1.

Figure 1-1. The Summary of Most Recent Reviews gives a picture of another member's feedback history

Here you'll see the number of positive, negative,
and neutral comments, as well as how many of each were received by
the user in the past seven days, the past month, and the past six
months. Among other things, this helps add a little perspective to
older entries, especially negative ones.

For example, before you bid on any auction, you'll
want to check out the seller's feedback. A given
seller might have 140 positive comments and 3 negative comments,
while another seller might have 612 positive comments and only 2
negative comments. Is the second seller necessarily better than the
first? What if both of his negative comments were received in the
past week?

On the auction page, a seller's standard feedback
rating is supplemented with a "positive
feedback" percentage, which is calculated by
dividing the number of positive comments by the total number of
positive and negative comments. Note that since neutral comments are
not part of the equation, a seller with 34 positive comments and 8
neutral comments will have a seemingly perfect positive feedback
percentage of 100%. But does this percentage mean this seller is more
trustworthy than the aforementioned sellers, with positive feedback
percentages of 97.9% and 99.7%, respectively? Of course not.

The point is that numbers alone are not sufficient to gauge the
reputation of any
single eBay member. Instead, take a moment and investigate. See when
the less favorable feedback comments were left and what the posters
had to say. For example, the eight neutral comments may have all been
left during a week when the seller was in the hospital. By the same
token, the three negative feedback comments earned by the first
seller may have been left when he was new to eBay and more prone to
make mistakes. But if the lion's share of a
seller's negative comments were entered within the
last week, it might show a pattern of dissatisfaction with an item
the user just started selling.

For further information, you can view the auction corresponding to
any particular feedback comment by clicking the item number on the
right. (Since completed auctions are kept on eBay only for about 90
days, you'll be able to view only the most recent
transactions.) Note also that each feedback comment is marked with
either S or B, signifying whether the eBay member was the seller or
buyer in the specified transaction.